Sunday, 28th June, 2026
Lovely day yesterday. Not too hot. Certainly not too cold. A lovely rhythm to the day established over the past 10 days. One of things that makes travelling so enjoyable is the changing scene. At the hop of a flight, the familiarity of England is replaced by the theatrical backdrop of another culture. It is challenging to the eyes but also to the mind in understanding its meaning. The North African, Moorish influence on Spanish design is everywhere. The names of distant places suddenly are near on road signs. The Oleanders and the Palm Trees paint the scenery.
Cartagena is an ancient, historic port city in the Region of Murcia, which has lived in my imagination since childhood – landlocked in an East Midlands rural village. It was founded by the Carthaginians in 227 BC and is best known for its incredible Roman heritage, natural harbour, and stunning 20th-century Art Nouveau architecture and it is here on a road sign outside my Development.
Language is a big part of the fun. When I first started travelling to France, I felt confident enough to use my Grammar School French. Then spending so much time exclusively in Greece my default ‘foreign’ language was Greek. We were always amused when we hopped over to France for a few days that our first inclination when we heard a ‘foreign’ French speaker was to reply in Greek and then scramble for the proper response. I did Spanish in Grammar School but it was 60 years ago and I struggle now although, as a Romance Language, I intuitively manage a lot or think I do.
Married to a chef means that travelling is also all about food and flavours, shopping and trying, avoiding the obvious and taking a leap into the untried. Buying ingredients to cook for Supper is an integral part of the experience. Here we’ve got a jar of caramelised onions that is to die for, another of sweet Pepper confit or jam and a lovely twist on Hummus but with a layer of olive and tomato Tapenade at the bottom.
I love tomatoes. They are a constant in my diet. I’ve always said that if you sliced me through, you would find I was largely made up of tomato. These quite ugly looking ‘Black Tomatoes’ are explosively delicious rather like the huge, Greek island ones. Grown in England, they taste of nothing but water.
They say that travel broadens the mind. Unfortunately, in my case it broadens everything and I keep having to reign myself in. But I can’t avoid wine. Wine is a passion but then all alcoholics say that, don’t they Dear Reader. Wine tells you so much about a place and people – the type of grape, the way they harvest and press it , the flavour and quality of the wine and how they drink it. For the French, it has been their raison d’être. For the Italians, it has a political theme. Historically, regimes have used wine as a tool of political identity and regional development, actively supporting wine production as a vital facet of the rural economy.
Spanish wine was in the doldrums for a large part of my life. They are really resurgent now and I love them. I am really enthusiastic about Rioja and the Tempranillo grape both white and red. In these hot times, I break all the rules and drink White icy and Red chilled. In fact I’m doing that now while watching the Test Match. Can you believe these two delicious bottles cost just £3.60. Must get some more.
Monday, 29th June, 2026
The last day of our second week here. The penultimate day of June. Ben Stokes retired after 15 years of Test Cricket. It is 60 years since England won the World Cup and I was reminded this morning that the first credit card in UK was introduced on this day in 1966.
To a child, 1966 is part of History. When you say 1966 and it is part of your life it feels rather like the other day. When you say it was 60 years ago, there is a shock of realisation at the disappearing time. The Barclaycard was launched from a disused shoe factory in Northampton which was the footwear centre of the UK but being increasingly challenged by cheaper, international competition. Today, it has all but gone completely. Life is in a constant flux.
At the time of its launch, Barclays found that 21% of adults had never even used a cheque. And 6 years later, my Teachers’ Pay was brought round each month to our classrooms in a Local Authority cheque sealed in a brown envelope delivered by the Deputy Head. I couldn’t be bothered going to the bank and just stuffed them in a draw until I ran out of money. On one occasion I found three months worth in there before I banked them.
From the moment I got married, I didn’t have or deal with cash. It got so bad that I didn’t really recognise actual coins at all. It was all left to my wife/accountant and I preferred it that way. People often observe that I seem obsessed with money and prices but, for most of my life it hasn’t worried me at all as long as I could travel, buy a new car, keep stocked up with good wine and be fed nice food and have the internet I was happy. All the simple necessities of life! These days I never carry cards. My phone does everything effortlessly.
Feels like so long ago but just 8 years today we were in a house with a wonderful pool that we had rented in the Dordogne for a month. A magical experience in a wonderful place. And today we are in a house with a pool which we are renting for a month in Murcia.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose and so it is, just like you said it would be. Life goes easy on me …. most of the time.
A propos of absolutely nothing and I don’t know where the French is coming from, my new girlfriend, Grazia the Grasshopper came up to meet me as I walked today. Look at those legs!
Tuesday, 30th June, 2026
The end of June and the start of our 3rd week in Spain. At 10.00 am, it is 30C/86F outside. The doorbell at home has just rung on my phone and it was the postman. At 9.00 am in UK? Our post doesn’t normally come until the afternoon. Anyway, when I checked the cameras, I was delighted to see it was raining. The garden will be delighted as well although most of the rain today will be in the North West.
Back in 2009, I had been retired for just 3 months and I was enjoying my Greek home but I was also desperately trying to acclimatise to the change in my own mind. It just isn’t possible to switch from full on commitment to total freedom overnight. It was particularly true in my case because the end came so suddenly. I remember when I first started teaching, the LEA ran courses preparing those close to Retirement for that change. They would go out of school for an afternoon a week in their last term. I fancied that myself at the age of 25.
When it came to it, at the age of 58, we didn’t even stay for farewell speeches and drinks. We just left our keys on our office desks and walked out into obscurity. That’s what we wanted. Rather like a version of Monopoly, we collected our payouts and passed go. Once in Greece, we waited for our Lump Sums and Pensions to appear in the bank account. The reason I mention this is because I found an email from my sister, Liz, in 2009 suggesting I may be retiring too early and that she couldn’t imagine doing it herself. This was my reply.
I’m afraid there is too much I want to do to go on working. I definitely did not want to die working. Mum had been trying to get me to retire almost since I was 50. She feared a repeat of Dad and dying at 49. I have no intention of dying young but, when I go, I would like to die picking peaches in my garden in Greece, sipping ouzo in a Peloponnese Ouzerie, meandering down the Grand Canal in Venice or sipping Espresso in Bologna or exploring the fish market in Marseille or touring the vineyards of the Dordogne or on my book signing tour of Great Britain or ….. I may only have twenty five years left. Can I fit it all in?
I was writing this in my Office in Greece where I was trying to recreate all the Offices and services I had had over the years, life after life. I recorded in my diary for that day:
Pauline and I put big hats on to go out and water the Fruit trees. We have young peaches, apricots, pears, lemons, oranges and tangerines plus three fig trees. We also water the young olive trees. It takes about two hours to do all that. I get back to find my seedlings in their peat pots are rapidly drying out and are in need of emergency watering. That done, we collapse. One of the lessons Ruth has been urging me to learn is that Retirement is all about pacing yourself. I think I’m learning it.
Looking back now at a 17 year distance, I have done most of those things I wanted to do with the exception of the book tour but you never know. I said I hoped for another 25 years and that means I’ve still got 8 more years to publish the book. Of course, since 2009, there have been some exciting interventions and events that inform my thoughts and writing and which are still to be concluded. Who knows what the final chapter will contain. Anyway, my ambition stretches beyond 8 more years now. How about you, Dear Reader? Time for a swim.
Wednesday, 1st July, 2026
Good Morning, Dear Reader, and it is a good morning – hot, sunny and still. Lovely way to start July, 2026. Happy New Month. It’s wonderful to be alive. Long may it last. I want to live to see the exciting future.
I want to see quite a few ambitions resolved not least I look forward to seeing the next digital revolution embedded. There was a time when people scoffed at the idea of steam power, at the introduction of electricity, at the first combustion engine vehicles on the roads, at the internet of things and now at Artificial Intelligence. Hopefully, before I die I will see the total disappearance of petrol cars on the roads and AI will be as mainstream as the internet.
Yesterday afternoon, it was so hot that, after a long swim, we went in the shade and I used AI to do a number of things I have been thinking about for a while. First I tried a fairly simple task as a tester. In our rented property, there is a sign written in two languages but which one is Spanish? Do you know, Dear Reader?
I used Google Translate to work on the first statement. It says, This establishment is full of claims at the disposal of those who solicit them. Clear as mud. The second statement turns out also to be Spanish and says, This establishment has complaint forms available to those who request them. Makes more sense but what is the difference? Microsoft Copilot told me:
Aquest: This is a Spanish (Catalan) word.
Este: This is a Spanish (Castilian) word.This sign establishes the property as a legally responsible and reliable one.
Fantastic. AI is already about to replace Google Translate. But that is too easy for it. My next job was far more complex and demanding but, before you read it, know that this whole project described below took less than 60 seconds which is much less than it took me to type the question.
I wrote the other day about moving to installing air conditioning powered by solar panels at home. Whenever I try to research an estimate of what I need and of what it would cost I find it impossible to do with getting myself bombarded by companies relentlessly trying to sell me their services. I don’t want to deal with commerce until I’ve made the initial calculations myself.
There are so many variables to compute including our ages and how long the system takes to recover its costs, where we live, the size of our house and how much power we currently consume. We have to project forward our future demands – for example, if we install air con., buy an electric car and increase the heating/cooling in the Gym – that also informs the decision. Apparently, we are higher than average electricity consumers already. These additions would exacerbate that. So, of course I tell my AI friend the parameters of the question.
I also ask it to assess the system to fit our house – a 5 bedroom detached property on the South Coast with a large, south facing roof on which I could put up to 20 solar panels with a battery for storage. I tell it that we are hoping to remain there until we are 85 but to factor resale value of the added investment. The instant calculation is 20 panels with a battery rather future-proofs our demands over the next 7-10 years and includes an uplift on resale value.
It ends with a projection of my ideal system which I can now take to installers for an estimate of costs. This is the sort of professional friend I need – only there when I call and not phoning me up to talk during the football.
This really took so little time for AI – something which has occupied me for months. It is a dispassionate, unbiased, empirically-based calculation which is only as good as what I put in but its response is without ulterior motive which is what I want.
Thursday, 2nd July, 2026
I really can’t enthuse about Wimbledon and I’m not over excited by the Football World Cup although I do watch it half-heartedly. I watched England last night because it kicked off at 6.00 pm here. The next match will be 2.00 am here so I will have to get some sleep before then. I’m in a Lads Whatsapp group and we chat in real time so I won’t want to let them down. I love Test Cricket for its thoughtful intelligence and process. At the moment, we have a sports storm of all three.
Of course, it is Oldham Wakes Holidays which ironically always coincides with Wimbledon Fortnight. A real clash of the Classes. It was certainly an odd tradition I was dropped in to. Why on earth did I go there? Answers on a postcard. I’ve just been out to buy postcards for the digitally challenged. Don’t like to let the old and wrinkly readership down. Officially, Wakes Holidays have long been abolished in Oldham.
They were first mentioned in the 1790s but were at their peak in the 1950s/60s. Initially, they were just one week per year and, crucially, it was unpaid. They were the original oxymoronic, sweet & sour experience. Workers in the mills desperately needed a rest from long hours, 6 days a week in the mills but they had to save from their meagre wages enough to go on holiday and to replace a week’s earnings at the same time.
The Labour Government, after the war, saw workers entitled to longer holidays and Wakes became two weeks – last week of June & first week of July – exactly Wimbledon fortnight and workers received holiday pay for the first time.
This is one of the mysteries for me. Those considered Working Class voted in large numbers for the Deform Party who voted in Parliament against Labour’s Employment Rights Bill and raising the Minimum Wage. They voted against improving working conditions for the very people who would suffer if their party came to power.
Fortunately, I’m here to tell you, Dear Reader, that there will not be a Deform government. In my view, we have seen peak Deform and Farage’s star is distinctly on the wane. In fact, I predict that Farage will have run off in to a money-lined future away from politics by the next election if it goes the full three years.
It’s 2.00 pm here and I am going out to post the cards I’ve written. I hope the recipients appreciate what I put myself through to communicate. I don’t know why but there are just no public mail boxes for kilometres around here. I am setting out on a 6 kilometre round walk in searing heat to post cards. At least I will lose weight if only temporarily.
The girl who sold me the cards spoke with a perfect English accent and it turned out she came from London and went to Brighton University. I love those sorts of coincidences. Even so, she seems happy serving in an obscure newsagents shop in an obscure shopping centre in an obscure part of Spain. I must admit, obscurity has its attractions.
Friday, 3rd July, 2026
Woken up to a lovely blue sky and strong sunshine and 26C/79F at 7.00 am. My weather app says the North of England was just 13C/55F at the same time. Sounds a bit Autumnal although we are expecting a scorchingly hot weekend on the South Coast and our garden will be gasping for water. Can’t be helped. It’s got to manage another 13 days without us.
It was annual gardening day here yesterday. Teams of gardeners were shinning up palm trees to prune the old leaf branches and release the new growth. It’s quite a task. The trees are around 25 ft tall and the leaves are tough and razor sharp. Just to make it a little harder, the temperature they worked in was hovering around 37C/99F. What people are prepared to do for money. Rather them than me.
We are well in to our 18th year of playing out. These days, I don’t miss work at all although I still have contact with former staff and pupils. I did have pause for thought the other day when I spoke to a girl – now Head of Humanities – and I thought,
You’re still there after all these years while I have been indulging myself. You have been getting up every morning, driving to work and going through long days of utter nonsense just to drive home in the evening, horribly brain dead, to snatch a few hours of relaxation only to get up and do it all over again while I do just what I want and still get paid for it.
I was reminded of this yesterday as 2 x State Pensions + 2 x Teachers Pensions all appeared in our Current Account while we sat in the sun with a glass of chilled, white Rioja. It all feels so decadent.
It feels so lucky. In fact, although I keep being chided that we worked hard for this from school and university educations to nearly 40 years as teachers, I am aware that there are lots of people in this world who work just as hard without this reward. But we really have been lucky in a special and unpredictable way.
Normally, one would expect the next Generation to stand on the shoulders of the previous one and to be better off. One of the ways in which this happens is illustrated by pay/earnings. Teachers’ Pay is index-linked. It increases to match inflation which gives it some stability in terms of purchasing power. It is an element of fortune along with the Final Salary scheme that makes Teaching Pensions worth having. What normally would be expected is that pay would go up faster than inflation and living standards would rise relatively over time. In this scenario, work pensions diminish against current earnings.
Uniquely, however, our retirement has coincided with a long period of flat or diminished salary values. In other words, each year in spite of any pay rise, inflation erodes the value of money. If pay doesn’t rise enough to match inflation the purchasing ability of pay falls. This, of course, is the opposite to an index-linked pension. I asked AI to provide me with the data for 2009 – 2026 of the most junior teacher’s pay progression since we retired. Although the green line indicates a positive rise in pay over the 17 years, the orange bars representing ‘real purchasing power’ indicate that pay today is still lower than when we retired. This is quite astonishing.
However, to bring me down to earth with a bump, I asked AI to collect me the data for savings of £250,000.00 in an average cash savings bond over the 17 years of my retirement. In other words, not in riskier stocks and shares but in ‘safe’ savings bonds the graph illustrates the effect of inflation on values and it’s not good. Just to add to my woes, regular readers will know that I put £18,000.00 into Government Bonds for a bit of fun. In the first 5 months, I won 7 prizes. In the last 5 months, I have not won a bean.